Police say man is recording debit card numbers

The man's face can been seen clearly through a camera at an ATM on the North Side.

But he wasn't a customer, police said. He had installed a "skimming" device, which records debit-card account numbers belonging to the ATM's users, making it easy for him to steal their money.

The device lets the user create a new card and spend the stolen money until the account runs dry or is shut down.

In what one officer called a new twist on an old scam, Chicago police said the man has used the device to rob ATM users in the city and in northern, northwestern and western suburbs.

"We think it's the same guy," Sgt. Tim Kusinski, whose detectives are handling the investigation for three city cases, said Wednesday.

The skimming devices were found between roughly July and December. On Dec. 16, the suspect placed one of the devices in an outdoor ATM at the Ravenswood Bank, at 2300 W. Lawrence Ave., police said.

The same man installed devices at two Washington Mutual Bank branch ATMs last July, one at 3556 N. Southport Ave. and the other at 2744 N. Clark St. He is suspected of removing and replacing ATM panels inside the vestibules at those locations.

The suspect is described as a white man, 20 to 30 years old, with brown eyes, dark hair and a medium complexion.

Police said he was last seen wearing a baseball cap and a dark leather jacket and traveling in a recent-model black Jaguar with no license plates.